Going to a Huntsville technology job in the aerospace industry from Walmart or a deep-sea charter boat may seem a leap, but it’s happening in Huntsville as tech companies perfect onsite training to attract employees and keep and promote the ones they have.

Jeremy Hughey, 32, of Priceville, Ala., went from Walmart department manager with no robotics experience to senior technician building robotic tools at Aerobotix of Huntsville.

Aerobotix develops builds and the robots that in turn build “high-precision components” for aircraft, defense, automotive and other markets. It’s one of numerous companies big and small in the hot Huntsville market who find people first and then train them for specific jobs.

Often those jobs involve state of the art technology, but companies have learned how to make it accessible. One of the top practitioners at that is also one of the area’s biggest employers – Mazda-Toyota Manufacturing.

“Anyone can walk in off the street and work at MTM as a production team member,” MTM spokeswoman Jessica Luther said this week. “We have people from every industry – restaurant workers, former insurance salesmen, former school teachers, the list goes on and on.”

Hughey heard about his future job at Aerobotix from a friend working at the company. “He was telling me they needed more guys, technicians, and he was basically like, ‘If you can read the instructions for Legos you can read some of these drawings we have, build some assemblies,’” Hughey said this week.

It sounded good enough to try and six years later Hughey is a senior technician installing robotic systems for customers and supporting buyers at their facilities.

Aerobotix paid for Hughey’s two-year degree in advanced manufacturing electrical systems from Calhoun Community College. He’s getting a degree in business now at his own expense from Athens State University with an eye toward management.

Community colleges like Calhoun, Drake State Technical College are also key to large companies like Mazda-Toyota Manufacturing. “We knew the best thing we could do is invest in our own training processes and workforce partners like Calhoun Community College and Drake State Community College,” MTM spokeswoman Luther said.

Orange Beach native Drew Murray was another Aerobotix hire moving from his family charter fishing boat to the company. It was a great job through college and high school but “very seasonable,” Murray said.

Now working for Aerobotix at a Lockheed Martin missile and fire control facility in Troy, Ala., Murray has a mathematics degree from Troy State University and plans to stay with the company indefinitely.

“It’s a smaller company located in Alabama that will push you to succeed and wants to help you out,” he said.

Aerobotix Vice President Chris Kolb said his company isn’t the only one being creative with employees in the Huntsville metro job market. Other companies also look in high schools “for those type of kids that want to apply themselves in that senior year,” he said.

“We picked up a couple of students out of James Clemens High School (in Madison),” Kolb said. “We started interning those young men and I believe both are about to be full-time. They got the exposure, they performed and they’re falling in love with it.”

That’s called before-hire training and it is also popular in today’s job market.

“I think you’re seeing a little bit more of it than you have normally,” Huntsville-Madison County Chamber Vice President Lyndsay Ferguson said of before-hire training. Ferguson, whose focus is the Huntsville metro workforce, said companies and the state are also focused on ways to give people the opportunity to move up.

“Every company that I know of is working in that way,” Ferguson said. “They’re still looking at a baseline both of aptitude but also attitude in terms of interest and willingness to train in that way.”

The other job market practice that “pairs with that and maybe has been even (popular) is the intentional desire to train the existing workforce,” Ferguson said. “If you look at someone who may have been working in a production role, now you’re looking at other opportunities to train that person, so they maintain in the company and have that growth potential. That has been a been focus area.”

“Hiring has gotten easier for the most part (in the Huntsville market),” Ferguson said. “And yet, there’s still on-growing needs and we’re a community with growing job opportunities so there’s still interest in making sure people are aware of the opportunities.”

The Huntsville unemployment rate is 1.9 percent, Ferguson said. But more people say they are ready to re-enter the job hunt. Or even come off the boat and out of the big box store.